The Darkness Knows

44

The last thing they ever did together was drive out to the Seltjarnarnes Peninsula at the westernmost point of Reykjavík, to watch a lunar eclipse. That whole year had been characterised by earth tremors and other unusual natural phenomena. A tourist-friendly eruption on the Fimmvörduháls pass had turned out to be only the prelude to another, much more serious eruption under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier that had disrupted air traffic all over Europe. In Iceland, it had been accompanied by a massive ash fall and severe flooding. The cataclysmic year had ended with a lunar eclipse early in the morning of the winter solstice. Although Erna had been bedbound at home, she had insisted on seeing the eclipse and, as always, Konrád had bowed to her wishes.

She was terribly weak when he helped her out to the car. He had left the heater running first, to keep the piercing December cold at bay. A north wind had been blowing for the last few days and frost had settled like a crystalline blanket over the city’s streets and squares. The frozen ground squeaked under his boots. The night sky was clear and, as they drove down the hill at Ártúnsbrekka, they got a good view of the full moon sailing high in the heavens to the west. The Earth’s shadow had already begun its passage across it, and by the time they drove into the gloom at the end of the Seltjarnarnes Peninsula, the glowing disc had been veiled with a peculiar reddish darkness.

Konrád left the engine ticking over so they could keep the heater on, but switched off the lights. They weren’t the only people out there. Several other cars had headed to the point to experience the eclipse away from the glare of the city lights. One man had set up a small telescope, angled towards the moon. Other figures, ignoring the cold, were standing on top of the shore ridge in front of them. The wind whistled around the car. The longer they sat there, their eyes adapting to the dark, the better they could make out the vast starry vault of the sky, with its sea of lights reaching them from far back in time.

‘I want to get out,’ Erna said.

‘Erna...’ Konrád objected.

‘I have to get out.’

‘It’s too cold, Erna. I shouldn’t have brought you here.’

‘For a little while. Please. Just for a little while. It’s no good trying to watch a lunar eclipse through the windscreen.’

Despite his reservations, he gave in to her wishes and got out of the car. He was wearing a thick down jacket and a woollen hat. Erna was similarly well wrapped up in a warm coat, a hat with ear flaps, a big scarf and thick gloves. Konrád walked round the front of the car, opened the passenger door, took Erna in his arms and lifted her out, taking her weight with his good arm. He carried her up to the top of the gravel bank, where he put her down, using his body to shelter her from the stripping cold of the wind. They could hear the waves breaking on the shore in the darkness. Erna gazed for a long time at the moon, now no more than a dim rose in the night sky. For the first time since she had told him she was ill, he saw that she was crying.

He took her in his arms again and carried her weak, exhausted body back to the car. It was warm and cosy inside as he laid her down with infinite care in the passenger seat.

‘Thank you, Konrád, for everything,’ she whispered, so quietly he could hardly make out the words.

They sat there in the car with the wind whistling outside, as more people arrived on the peninsula to watch the heavenly bodies sailing along their ancient orbits. Gradually the shadow lost its dark red tint and became a deeper black as it passed across the moon. The round shape of the Earth sank with infinite slowness, down over the glowing disc until only a tiny curved rim remained, then it vanished and the moon was whole again.

When they’d left home in the early hours, Erna had told him there hadn’t been a lunar eclipse on the solstice since the seventeenth century, and it wouldn’t happen again for a hundred years. She was glad they could share this moment, when time became both present and eternity at once.

Konrád reversed out of the parking space. Erna was sleeping peacefully; the morphine had taken effect. He drove slowly home, careful not to jolt her, but by the time he parked in front of their house in Árbær and prepared to take her inside, she had gone. Konrád sat there for a long time without moving, before gently freeing her from the seat belt and carrying her into the house, where he laid her in bed and told her what he had forgotten to tell her in the car on the way home: about how the moon was described somewhere in a poem. That it was the brooch of the night. The old friend of lovers.

It was the shortest day of the year and the longest in Konrád’s life.

It lasted only four hours and twelve minutes.

And went on for eternity.