Butterflies in November

FORTY-TWO

Many consequential events can occur in a woman’s life in the space of less than twenty-four hours. Most mistakes are made in a fraction of a moment and can be measured in seconds: taking a wrong turn, stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake, saying a yes instead of a no or a maybe. Mistakes are rarely the outcome of a logical sequence of decisions. A woman can be on the brink of total surrender to love, for instance, without even pondering on it for so much as a minute.

The black desert is no longer ahead but behind us, and the summer bungalow isn’t far off now, just one more little fjord and a heath. As I’m driving through yet another low-hanging cloud, all the way down to the lava rocks, it suddenly dawns on me that I am midway between the beginning and the end. I can’t quite decide whether to measure the distance in years or kilometres. There certainly seems to be enough space ahead of me and plenty of time, and ample time behind me too. By not following the movement of the hands on my divorce watch, and by circling the island anti-clockwise, I have not only gained a head start over time, but also managed to constantly surprise and even, ultimately, catch up with myself.

If one were to summarize my experiences so far on this journey, one could say that I have caused the death of four animals (five if the city goose is to be included) and that I have successfully crossed forty single-lane bridges, tackled some difficult slopes and become intimately acquainted with three men over a stretch of little more than 300 kilometres, most of which was unpaved and literally wedged between the mountains and the coastline. Even though the first 100 kilometres were fairly uneventful in this regard and I expect no major surprises in the last 100-kilometre stretch, it was nevertheless almost equal in intensity to the past ten years of my life combined. The fact that I couldn’t tell you how many churches we passed on our journey may be indicative of my moral standing. I would have bought the souvenir glued to my dashboard no matter what it was, even a carved wooden model of a police station or a bank.

Analysing my existence from a purely statistical point of view, this works out as one man for every 160-kilometre stretch, which should be considered a fairly high level of activity in a country in which each inhabitant shares one square kilometre with his fellow man. According to my estimates, calculated on the basis of the length of the national Ring Road, which is 1,420 kilometres long, that should amount to 17.7 men before the journey is over. In terms of square kilometres, this corresponds to vast expanses of lava fields per person, extensive stretches of desert, reservoir basins, eroded land and withering lupin fields, as well as countless bridges, squawking seabirds and hamburger joints as one approaches the coast.

And then, I also ponder on the following: if I were expecting a child, there would be three possible fathers, or 17.7, considering the journey as a whole. This is slightly above the national average, on the basis of the total number of lovers a woman can expect to have in the course of her life. At the end of the day, one can always console oneself with the genetic fact that there can only ever be one father per child. I am fully aware of the fact that in many countries of the world I would have been executed many times over for less.

However, when I look into the rear-view mirror, I see a young woman with short dark hair, green eyes, pale skin and a loose lock dangling over her forehead — there’s nothing sluttish about her, no make-up streaming down her cheek; an outsider might even describe her as innocent, pure and chaste. I see her looking at the world with sharp eyes, through the lock of hair, which she then confidently brushes away from her face, as if she imagined she was finally on top of things, as if she believed she was on the right path, as if she had a premonition of what she wanted, as if she somehow knew who she was. She turns on her indicator and sways into the parking lot of a petrol station. After swiftly rummaging through the fridges of the store, she dumps cartons of blueberry buttermilk yogurt and a smoked meat and Italian bean salad sandwich on the counter by the cashier. The boy is still sleeping.