Butterflies in November

FIFTY-EIGHT

We hear a banging engine sound long before the yellow contraption comes over the mountain and down a grey cloud. The boy sees the plane’s swaying wings as it flies over the chalet. There can be no doubt as to who the pilot is.

I had borrowed my mother’s car and when I came out of the restaurant with Auður, there was a white paper rocket under one of the windscreen wipers. Seventh heaven. Private flying lessons. Ten lessons special offer. Make your Icarus dreams come true. First lesson is free, eleven percent discount on the following two. Negotiable payment options.

My fear of heights is legendary and I purely look on airplanes as a means of getting me away from the island. Nevertheless, I think the reference to Icarus is an interesting one, since it was precisely his dream that led to his demise. Despite the warnings I get from Auður, who sees no interest in this message, I decide to call the man who will later become my husband. It eventually transpired that the ad had been solely aimed at me and no one else and I’ve yet to step on his plane.

The silhouette drifts over the barren plain in the midday twilight and up the hill, heading straight for me. I see him standing outside on the deck in an orange anorak. What is he lingering there for? Is he going to come in or stay out? He strikes a match. I see the red glow of the tip of his cigar and then myself, reflected in the window, but don’t budge. He seems to have spotted me, because he casts his cigar away and walks straight towards me.

The man looks both familiar and alien to me, as he stands there with his hands buried deep in his anorak pockets. My memory of him is somehow different. Older or younger? Did he maybe have a beard? That’s the first thing that strikes me, his beardlessness, it sharpens his facial features. Wasn’t he taller than that? He seems to be of average height, standing there by the doorway. Could be the shoes I guess. Not only are they unfamiliar to me, but they’re worn out and part of some new sphere of experience. Even the colour of his eyes surprises me; I could have sworn the eyes of my ex-husband were brown, but now they seem to be grey. He hands me a cardboard box and pecks me on the cheek.

“Your mom sends her love; that needs to go into the fridge.”

The box contains salmon, halibut, scallops and prawns, as well as fried fish balls. At the bottom of the box there’s a wrapped parcel with a blue ribbon for the boy. Through the window I can see the freezing-plant this fish probably all comes from.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

The boy stands by my side in the doorway, holding my hand.

“There’s a button missing.”

Tumi points at a loose thread sticking out of the man’s anorak. Thorsteinn is normally very meticulous about these things. I interpret.

“Biscuit,” says my boy in his resonant, metallic voice, pointing and sniffing at a protrusion from the man’s pocket.

“Can I have a biscuit?” I interpret, and by way of confirmation the boy stretches out his hand with a pleading look.

My ex looks embarrassed and the sparkle in his eyes instantly fades as his gaze moves away from my neck. He pulls half a glistening and crumpled packet of chocolate biscuits out of his anorak pocket. The boy smiles.

It is then that I realize, as if I’d found the missing piece to an old jigsaw, that he has the same taste as a cream biscuit, his skin, his entire being has the exact same taste as the vanilla cream inside those biscuits.

“Doesn’t he play outside with his friends? Can’t you get someone to mind him?”

He continues to empty his pockets as he talks, like a condemned man, guiltily placing all his belongings on the table, or a visitor standing in front of a prison warden, before going in to see an inmate. The boy clutches the packet of biscuits with both hands, trembling with excitement. Finally, my ex pulls out a picture of his daughter to show me. She is small and dark with a red face, like all babies. He pulls off some layers of clothing: his anorak, shoes, sweater and then even his socks — I wonder if he’s going to go to bed.

Once he is seated, he tells me she’s jealous of me and asks if I’m also jealous of her. I say no. He wants to know why not, am I not fond of him any more? I say to a certain extent, but that he’s starting to turn into a stranger, that I no longer see him behind me, like a mirage in the corner of my eye in the mirror, when I brush my teeth, that he no longer pops up in my mind when I’m thinking or reading, that he has started to fade, vanish, that I find it hard to picture him any more, that I’m starting to confuse him with other men, that other men are starting to supplant him. I tell him that I am, nevertheless, still relatively fond of him, at least fonder of him than I am of the local priest whom I haven’t met yet or the vet whom I have actually met. He takes out his nail clippers as I’m talking, and starts to clean his nails.

I allow him to digest the information and move away to heat up some cocoa. The boy follows and arranges the cookies on the plate for the guest.

“You’ve changed somehow,” he says when I return, “I can’t quite figure out what it is, your hair maybe, did you have it cut?”

“No, I’m growing it.”

Then he tells me his relationship isn’t working out the way it should:

“In the beginning she was open and willing to be guided.”

“Maybe you can teach your daughter something instead.”

“If things don’t work out between Nína Lind and me, which seems likely, could we give us another go?”

“I thought you didn’t love me any more.”

“Love or not love, you haven’t answered my question.”

“No, we can’t do that.”

At some stage you have to decide to stop, not necessarily because it’s totally over, but because one decides to put it aside. Then I also tell him that I’ve changed, that I’ve experienced so many things without him.

“In forty days?”

“No, over many years.”

He looks disappointed.

“We can still meet, though, and go out for dinners together?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can’t we be friends then?”

“Isn’t that unnecessary, since we don’t have a child together?”

“Hang on, who was it that didn’t want children?”

“Me, I suppose.”

“God, you’ve changed.”

He slams the door behind him, but comes back fifteen minutes later and stands there brooding in the doorway with his hands buried in his pockets. He can’t fly back in the dark, he says, and he wants to know if he can stay the night. I tell him that he can, but that the space beside me is occupied.

“Couldn’t we push the kid over a bit when he’s asleep?”

“No, that’s out of the question.”

Tumi looks at me with a triumphant smile, as he puts on his elephant pyjamas.