Butterflies in November

FIFTY-ONE

As I’m posting my latest translation, I take the opportunity to give Mom a call. I realize it’s not very sensible to have no phone, with Tumi in my care. What if he had an ear infection and I had to call a doctor? He wouldn’t know how to cope if something happened to me. He might run up the moor on his own instead of finding his way down to the village. I’ll buy a phone and immediately write down the emergency number for him on a piece of paper this evening and stick it on the wall beside Hercules.

“What kind of a man is he?”

“What man?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, you haven’t phoned for two weeks, we were getting really worried.”

“He’s divorced, has two kids.”

“Does he still talk about his ex-wife?”

“Hardly ever, he showed me a picture of her, though.”

“He showed you a picture? He isn’t over her yet.”

“She was standing between their two daughters in the photo, he couldn’t have cut her out.”

“I’ve collected some clippings for you.”

“Mom, I’m still in Iceland, they get all the papers here too, you know.”

“You don’t read them.”

“They speak Icelandic here, if it weren’t for the flooding I could be at your place for coffee this evening.”

“I’ve given up coffee; I’ve made some changes in my life.”

“Anyway, I’ve got plenty to read and do with Tumi. He’s learning how to dance and embroider.”

“Is that what you’re teaching that fatherless boy? To dance and embroider? I’ve no recollection of ever seeing you embroider, neither as a child nor an adult.”

“It’s just simple cross-stitching. I let him try whatever he feels like. We bought a pattern with the picture of a horse; he wanted to embroider a blind horse.”

“A blind horse?

“Yes, we altered the pattern slightly and closed the horse’s eyes with the same colour as the crest, we’ve only changed it by four stitches altogether.”

I don’t tell her that he also swaps the colours, that he’s made its tail bright red and used the green yarn that was supposed to be applied to the grass on the mane, and that he then wanders with the yarn between different parts of the horse’s body, jumping from the unfinished head to the withers to do some stitching there and then skips to its flanks, which he chooses to stitch in sun-yellow.

“We’re mainly learning ballroom dancing and free style.”

“Don’t you need some food?”

“They have shops here just like anywhere else on the island, we get plenty.”

There is a long silence at the other end of the line. Tumi is getting restless in the play corner of the post office, having assembled the twelve remaining building cubes in every possible combination and being eager to move on to the promised visit to the bakery next door, where there are round tables and chairs and they serve hot bagels with cream cheese and cocoa.

“Anyway, Mom, I’ll talk to you again soon. Tumi is waving at you as we speak, we’re at the post office, I’m at a payphone.”

There’s a silence at the other end of the line. Finally, she speaks again:

“I heard from Thorsteinn yesterday, he was pretty down and didn’t look too good. He’s not a happy man.”

“I thought you said you’d heard from him, not that you’d seen him.”

“Well, he just popped by. We’re worried about you, you just vanished.”

“I’ve stopped thinking about Thorsteinn; right now I’m just thinking about me and Tumi.”

“He’s stuck in a predicament he has no say in. That woman seems to have him under her thumb.”