Hypothermia

7

When Erlendur got home that evening he buttered himself a flat-cake and topped it with smoked lamb, turned on the coffee-maker, then put Karen’s cassette back in the machine.

He thought about María’s suicide, about the despair required to precipitate such an act and the sheer mental torment that must have lain behind it. Erlendur had read notes from people who had taken their own lives, some consisting of only a few lines, maybe only a sentence, a single word; others longer, with a detailed enumeration of the reasons for the act, an apology of sorts. Sometimes the letter would be left on the pillow in the bedroom. Sometimes on the floor of the garage. Fathers, mothers, adolescents, pensioners, people who were alone in the world.

He was about to press ‘play’ when he heard a knock at the door. He went and opened it. Eva Lind slipped past him and came inside.

‘Is it a bad moment?’ she asked, taking off her knee-length black leather coat. Under it she was wearing jeans and a thick jumper. ‘It’s bloody cold outside,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this gale ever going to let up?’

‘I doubt it,’ Erlendur replied. ‘It’s forecast to last the week.’

‘Did Sindri come round?’ Eva Lind asked.

‘Yes. Do you want some coffee?’

‘Yes, please. What did he say?’

Erlendur went into the kitchen and fetched the coffee. He had tried to cut down on his caffeine intake in the evenings because he sometimes had trouble sleeping if he drank more than two cups. Not that he minded wakeful nights; they were the best time for grappling with problems.

‘He didn’t really say much, though he did mention that you’d had a row with your mother,’ Erlendur said when he returned. ‘He thought it was something to do with me.’

Eva Lind fished a packet of cigarettes from her leather coat, plucked one out with her nails and lit up. She blew the smoke in a long cloud across the living room.

‘The old bag went mental.’

‘Why?’

‘I told her you two should meet up.’

‘Your mother and I?’ Erlendur said in surprise. ‘Whatever for?’

‘That’s exactly what Mum said. “Whatever for?” To meet. To talk. To stop this bollocks of never talking. Why can’t you two do that?’

‘What did she say?’

‘She told me to forget it. End of story.’

‘Was that what the row was about?’

‘Yes. What about you? What do you say?’

‘Me? Nothing. If she doesn’t want to, that’s that.’

‘That’s that? Can’t you even talk to each other?’

Erlendur thought for a moment.

‘What are you trying to achieve, Eva?’ he asked. ‘You know it was all over a long time ago. We’ve hardly spoken for decades.’

‘That’s the point – you haven’t really talked since Sindri and me were born.’

‘I bumped into her when you were in hospital,’ Erlendur said. ‘It wasn’t pleasant. I think you should forget it, Eva. Neither of us wants this.’

Eva Lind had had a miscarriage a few years back and it had taken her a long time to get over the grief. She had been a drug addict for years but Sindri had told Erlendur that she had recently, on her own initiative, started to sort herself out and was doing well.

‘You’re quite sure?’ Eva asked, looking at her father.

‘Yes, quite sure,’ Erlendur said. ‘Tell me, how are you? You look somehow different, more grown up.’

‘More grown up? Getting old, am I?’

‘No, that’s not what I meant. More mature, maybe. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Sindri said you were sorting yourself out.’

‘He’s talking crap.’

‘Is he right?’

Eva Lind didn’t answer immediately. She inhaled the smoke of her cigarette and held it in her lungs for a long time before finally expelling it through her nose.

‘My friend died,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you remember her.’

‘Who?’

‘Her name was Hanna. Your lot found her behind the rubbish bins at Mjódd.’

‘Hanna?’ Erlendur whispered, thinking back.

‘She overdosed,’ Eva Lind said.

‘I remember. It wasn’t long ago, was it? She was on heroin. We don’t see much of that here, at least not yet.’

‘She was a good mate.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Do you ever?’ Eva Lind said. ‘It was either do what she did or…’

‘Or?’

‘Try to do something different, try to drag myself out of the pit. Do it for real for once.’

‘What do you mean by doing what she did? Do you think she did it deliberately? Took an overdose?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eva Lind said. ‘She didn’t care. About anything.’

‘Didn’t care?’

‘Couldn’t give a shit about anything.’

‘What was her history again?’ Erlendur asked. He remembered a wretched-looking girl of about twenty who had been found with a syringe in her arm outside the shopping centre at Mjódd the previous winter. The binmen had found her early in the morning, lying frozen with her back to the wall.

‘Why do you always have to talk like a professor?’ Eva Lind said. ‘What the fuck does it matter? She died. Isn’t that enough? What does her “history” matter? What does it matter that there was no one there for her? Anyway, she wouldn’t have wanted help because she hated herself. So why should anyone have bothered to help her?’

‘She seems to have mattered to you,’ Erlendur commented warily.

‘She was my mate,’ Eva Lind replied. ‘Anyway, I didn’t mean to talk about her. Will you agree to meet Mum?’

‘You feel that I wasn’t there for you?’ Erlendur asked.

‘You’ve done more than enough,’ Eva Lind said.

‘I never manage to deal with you – I can never help you in any way.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll cope.’

‘She hated herself?’

‘Who?’

‘Your friend. You said she hated herself. Was that why she took an overdose? Are you saying she despised herself?’

Eva Lind slowly stubbed out her cigarette.

‘I don’t know. I think she’d lost all self-respect. It didn’t matter to her any more what became of her. She hated a lot of things but most of all I think she hated herself.’

‘Have you ever been in that situation?’

‘Only about a thousand times,’ Eva Lind replied. ‘Are you going to meet Mum?’

‘I really don’t think it would achieve anything,’ Erlendur said. ‘I’ve no idea what to say to her and last time we talked she bit my head off.’

‘Couldn’t you do it for me?’

‘What do you expect to get out of it? After all these years?’

‘I just want you two to talk,’ Eva Lind said. ‘To see you together. Is that so bloody hard? You have two children, Sindri and me.’

‘Surely you’re not hoping we’ll get back together?’

Eva Lind contemplated her father for a long moment.

‘I’m not an idiot,’ she said. ‘Don’t think I’m some kind of idiot.’

Then she stood up, collected her belongings and said goodbye.

Erlendur sat there remembering how Eva Lind would sometimes flare up abruptly like this. He thought he would never get the hang of talking to her without putting her back up. To him, the idea that he should meet up with Halldóra, his ex-wife and the mother of his children, was absurd. That chapter of his life was long finished, in spite of what Eva Lind might say or let herself dream. He and Halldóra had nothing to say to one another. She was a total stranger to him.

Remembering the tape, he went over to the machine and turned it on. He rewound a little to refresh his memory of what he had listened to before. He heard the medium’s voice become deep and gruff as he almost growled ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’ Then it changed in the next breath and the medium talked of feeling cold.

‘There was a different voice…’ the woman said.

‘Different?’

‘Yes, not yours.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It said I should be careful.’

‘I don’t know what it was,’ the medium said. ‘I don’t remember any-’

‘It reminded me…’

‘Yes?’

‘It reminded me of my father.’

‘The cold… doesn’t come from there. The intense cold I’m feeling. It’s directly connected to you. There’s something dangerous about it. Something you should beware of.’

Silence.

‘Is everything all right?’ the medium asked.

‘What do you mean, “beware of”?’

‘I don’t know. But the cold doesn’t bode well. I do know that.’

‘Can you summon my mother?’

‘I don’t summon anyone. She’ll appear if it’s appropriate. I don’t summon anyone.’

‘It was so brief.’

‘I’m afraid there’s not much I can do about that.’

‘He seemed very angry. He said: “You don’t know what you’re doing.” ’

‘You’ll have to decide for yourself what you want to read into that.’

‘Can I come again?’

‘Of course. I hope I’ve been able to help you a little.’

‘You have, thank you. I thought perhaps…’

‘What?’

‘My mother died of cancer.’

‘I understand,’ Erlendur heard the medium say sympathetically. ‘You didn’t tell me. Is it long since she died?’

‘Nearly two years.’

‘And did she make contact here?’

‘No, but I can sense her. I can sense her presence.’

‘Has she given you any sign? Have you been to any other psychics?’

A lengthy silence followed the question.

‘I’m sorry,’ the medium said. ‘Of course, it’s none of my business.’

‘I’ve been waiting for her to come to me in a dream but she hasn’t.’

‘Why have you been waiting for that?’

‘We made…’

Pause.

‘Yes?’

‘We made a pact.’

‘Oh?’

‘She… we talked about… that she would give me a sign.’

‘What sort of sign?’

‘If there was life after death she was going to send me a message.’

‘What kind of message? A dream?’

‘No, not a dream. But I’ve been waiting to dream about her. I do so long to see her again. Our sign was a bit different.’

‘You mean… Has she done it, has she given you a sign?’

‘Yes, I think so – the other day.’

‘What was it?’ the medium asked, the eagerness evident in his voice. ‘What was the sign? What kind of sign was it supposed to be?’

There was another long pause.

‘She was Professor of French at the university. Her favourite author was Marcel Proust and his work In Search of Lost Time. She had all seven volumes in French in a beautifully bound edition. She said she would use Proust. The sign would mean yes, there was life after death.’

‘And what happened?’

‘You think I’m mad.’

‘No, I don’t. People have been preoccupied with the question of whether there is life after death since time immemorial. We’ve been trying to find the answer for thousands of years, both scientifically and on a personal level, like you and your mother. It’s not the first time I’ve heard a story like this. And I don’t judge people.’

His words were followed by a long hiatus. Erlendur sat in his chair, engrossed. There was something strangely alluring about the dead woman’s voice, something unwavering and steadfast that Erlendur believed in. He was extremely sceptical about what she was saying and convinced that seances like the one he was listening to were of no use to anyone, and yet he was certain that the woman genuinely believed what she was saying, that what she had experienced was real to her.

Finally the silence was broken.

‘At first, after my mother died, I sat in the living room staring at Proust’s works, not daring to take my eyes off them. Nothing happened. Day after day I sat watching the bookcase. I even slept in front of the books. Weeks passed. Months. The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was to look at the bookcase. The last thing I did at night was to check if anything had happened. Gradually I realised that it was pointless and the more I thought about it and the longer I stared at the bookshelves, the better I understood why nothing was happening.’

‘And why was it? What did you realise?’

‘It dawned on me over time and I was immensely grateful. My mother was helping me through my grief. She’d given me something to focus on after her death. She knew I’d be devastated, whatever she said. She did her best to prepare me for her death; we used to have long conversations until she became too weak to talk. We discussed death and how she would send me a sign. But of course all that happened was that she made the process of grieving easier for me.’

Silence.

‘I don’t know if you understand me.’

‘I do. Go on.’

‘Then the other day, almost two years after my mother died – I’d given up watching the bookshelves and Proust by then – I woke up one morning and went to put on the coffee and fetch the paper, and when I was on my way back to the kitchen I happened to glance into the living room and…’

The machine hissed in the silence that followed the woman’s words.

‘What?’ the medium whispered.

‘It was lying open on the floor.’

‘What was?’

‘Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. The first volume in the series.’

Another long silence.

‘Is that why you came to me?’

‘Do you believe in life after death?’

‘Yes,’ Erlendur heard the medium whisper. ‘I do. I believe in life after death.’