Butterflies in November

THIRTY-THREE

We travel at a leisurely pace, slowly crossing the landscape, because we’re on holiday and have all the time in the world. Every now and then we stop for a snack and sometimes slip into our rain gear to pick up treasures off the side of the road, precious wet stones, and gradually fill the car with our spoils, pebbles, wet clothes, anoraks, socks, new sleeping bags, hats, gloves, crumbs and tufts of moss. The boy has started to draw pictures and various symbols on his fogged-up window with his index finger. When the weather occasionally clears, we see the landscape suddenly flashing before us through the window in magnificent spectacular waves. We park the car to find a moderately sized crater, close enough to the road, so that we can peer into it and marvel at the chaos of soggy nature. Then we lie down on the moss to see how fast the clouds glide by. The light has a delicate transparent essence that envelops me and the child, like a thin cotton veil.

“Where’s left?” he asks in a very clear voice when we’re back on the Ring Road again.

To be able to explain what the left is, I have to stop the car again. It is then a good idea to sit on separate wet tussocks. We’re close to a stone sheep pen and I wait for a red van to pass us before opening the door.

“Left is city language, but in the country there aren’t two but four directions to choose from. There’s north, south, east and west. So left is north, that’s out of my window, straight ahead is east, your window is south and the stuff that’s behind us and done with is west.”

I try to manage as best I can, creating images and signs with my hands, some of which I invent and others which I’ve seen him use. I talk about before and after, and also what is ahead of us and behind us, what has yet to come and what has already passed. He understands me better than I understand myself.

“In the city there are as many directions as we have hands, here in the country there are as many as the legs of an animal, four.”

“Chickens,” he says.

“OK, chickens are an exception.”

“Back mirror,” he says.

“That’s right, rear-view mirror.”

“Dad lives in the west.”

I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. Where does the child get these ideas from? Instead of talking about his father, whom, as far as I know, the child has only met a few times, I explain to him what it means to lose one’s bearings. The worst thing is to be stuck in a fog out in marshes or in a snowstorm on the moors, I say. Some people never lose themselves in nature, only in cities, and others only abroad. But still, most big cities are built in the same way. Some people get lost no matter where they are, and remain more or less lost for the whole of their lives. I’m speaking the language of the hearing, knowing perfectly well that he doesn’t understand it, until he starts crying. Then I stop and take off my divorce watch and hand it to him, saying:

“You can keep it.”

“Wet,” he says.

I fasten the watch around his wrist.

“We’ll stop soon and buy an ice cream and a postcard to send to your mommy in hospital.”

“Fly,” the boy says distinctly from the back seat as we’re about to drive off.

He’s right; something is fluttering in the car, not a fly as it happens but a butterfly, in late November. Could this butterfly have travelled with us all the way from the city and might it even be the same insect I touched with the tip of my fingers three weeks ago in my old kitchen? Like a stowaway it finally decides to give itself up and come out of its hiding place, because the ship is too far out at sea by now to be able to turn back.

A red blinking sign suddenly appears in the middle of the sand desert to inform us of our next stop. Hot dog and hamburger joints line the Ring Road at twenty-five-kilometre intervals. When I open the back door for Tumi to unfasten his seat belt, I notice he’s written two words on the misty glass: wet fly.

A bus is parked in the car park and we order hamburgers, after which I push Tumi ahead of me in the queue for the ladies’ toilet, undo the buttons on his overalls and he is ready to go. The women accompanying the Estonian choir stand in a single row in knitted sweaters, brandishing hairbrushes in the air and eyeing us through the mirrors, without breaking up the queue.

As soon as he’s done, I tell him to wait for me, not to budge, stay by the door.

When I come out, the boy is gone. The bus has driven off and, in state of panic, I ask the waitresses if they’ve seen a four-year-old hearing-impaired boy in blue overalls. They look at each other in silence. I run all over the place, thinking of him not being able to express himself, imagining him being taken away in a stranger’s car. Finally, I find him behind a shed in the yard where empty petrol tanks are stored. He’s holding the hand of a middle-aged man with a red face. They both look happy and timid. I drag the boy away from the man and give him a piece of my mind, telling him that I’ll report him for I don’t know what. The man hops into his red van and drives off.

“Daddy,” says the boy.

That wasn’t the boy’s father, that’s for sure. Both of the fathers of Auður’s children are young, handsome, sensitive men, but totally irresponsible.

In my hysteria I fail to catch his number plate.

The boy doesn’t want to talk to me and hides under a sleeping bag in the back seat. I rush back in to buy the postcard, my eyes firmly glued to the car and the kid inside. They only sell two postcards and they’re both of a waterfall I’m told is somewhere close by. The photos were taken so close to the waterfall that pearls of water can be seen on the lens. When I get back to the vehicle, the boy’s head re-emerges from under the sleeping bag. But no matter how hard we look, we can’t find the butterfly. It’s vanished into thin air.