The Quiet Mother

15

The old woman stared fearfully at Konrád. She hadn’t understood a single word he’d said and it soon dawned on him that she wouldn’t, no matter how he tried. No one had bothered to tell him what state she was in when he asked about her in the hallway and where he could find her. When he walked into her room, she was sitting up in her bed, looking out the window. He introduced himself and told her what he was doing there and then noticed that she was frightened of him. It looked as if she was going to start sobbing. He immediately slowed down and told her that he hadn’t meant to startle her, but she just stared at him like the intruder he was there in her room and in her lost world.

‘Who are you?’ Konrád heard someone ask behind him, and when he turned round, he saw a woman of about fifty in the doorway, looking at him. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I was going to talk to... umm...’

He momentarily forgot the old woman’s name.

‘No, there’s no point in talking to her,’ said the woman, short and plump in an unbuttoned coat. She was holding a mug of coffee, as if having just popped out for refreshment. ‘It’s been hopeless for a long time. I haven’t seen you here before,’ she added. ‘How do you know my mum, might I ask?’

Konrád introduced himself and said that he didn’t know her, but her sister.

‘You knew Valborg?’ The woman was clearly surprised. ‘Poor Valborg. It was horrible, what happened to her. And she was so ill, too. Just awful to think that such a thing can happen.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘Her neighbour has apparently been called in for questioning,’ said the woman. ‘The one living below Valborg.’

Konrád had already heard that. Marta had decided to bring the woman from the first floor down to the station. The police also wanted to talk to her lover, and he was being looked for. It came to light that the man wasn’t completely unknown to the police. He’d been an offender from a young age, and finally received a sentence of several years after his involvement in drug trafficking was discovered. Following his release from prison, the police had had no further dealings with him. On the other hand, he’d been on the first floor around the same time as Valborg was attacked, and hadn’t been seen leaving the building. This was based on the testimony of Emanúel, who’d been spying from his flat some distance away and may very well have missed seeing the man leave. Konrád couldn’t imagine him being a very reliable witness in that regard.

Konrád had spoken to the staff of the medical centre where Valborg worked, but found out nothing other than that she’d been a well-liked and reliable employee, helpful and tireless. Composed in everything she did but reticent about herself, and thought to be something of a loner.

Konrád told the woman in the hospital room that Valborg had approached him about a very personal matter, but that he’d declined to help her and now regretted it. The woman immediately seemed to understand what he was talking about.

‘Was it the child?’ she asked. ‘She spoke of wanting to do something about it.’

‘Your family knew?’

The woman walked over to her mother, who looked at her in as much surprise as she’d looked at Konrád before. The woman spoke soothingly and affectionately to her and got her to lie down, then spread the duvet over her. It was as if she were dealing with an infant.

‘I don’t know... did you say that Valborg had got in touch with you?’

Konrád sensed that the woman was reluctant to go into family matters with him, a complete stranger, and was sympathetic. He told her more about his acquaintance with Valborg, that they’d met among the works of art at the Ásmundur Sveinsson Museum and he’d got to know her story, though by no means all of it. Unfortunately, he hadn’t agreed to help her and admitted that he didn’t feel good about it, especially considering Valborg’s fate not long afterwards. He was a former law-enforcement officer, still had good connections among the police, and wanted to do more if he could.

‘I’ve thought a lot about what she told me and, if you don’t mind, I’d like to do what I can to find the child,’ Konrád said.

‘But why should you do that?’ said the woman. ‘Valborg is no longer with us.’

‘Yes, but there are two sides to the story. On the one hand, there’s her. On the other hand, there’s the child. Valborg wanted the child to know of her existence,’ said Konrád. ‘That she’d never stopped thinking about it and wanted to get to know that person, even though so much time had passed.’

The woman didn’t seem entirely opposed to what Konrád was saying.

‘We hardly have what you’d call a family,’ she said. ‘I went over this with the police when they got in touch. Valborg didn’t talk to me about it until after she learned of her illness six or so months ago. By then, my mother had been admitted here because of her dementia. Valborg said that Mum had known, but she never told me about it. This matter of Valborg’s came up shortly after I was born, and I was raised in large part by my grandma. Grandpa was dead. But Grandma never said a word about it either. Valborg told me that Grandma hadn’t known, and that she certainly would never have accepted it.’

For several moments, the woman looked silently at Konrád, as if she didn’t know how to react to this strange visit to her mother’s hospital room. She asked Konrád to tell her more about his acquaintance with Valborg and he tried to answer as best he could, telling her again of the few times that he’d spoken to her and that he’d more or less waved her off.

‘And what?’ she said. ‘Do you think you can find the child? She herself wasn’t able to.’

‘I want to try,’ Konrád said. ‘Even if only to assuage my conscience a bit. If the police are able to find out what happened to the child, that would be great, too.’

The woman considered his words for a moment, then held out her hand and introduced herself. She and Konrád shook hands and she told him everything she knew about Valborg and her child. Valborg had the baby in Selfoss, where she’d been staying temporarily. She’d met a midwife who pretty much took her in after Valborg told her that she wanted an abortion. She gave birth to the baby at the home of that midwife and gave it up, and knew nothing of its fate when she told her sister all of this a few years later. Her sister told her that it was probably best to leave well enough alone. As the years went by, what had happened became an increasingly heavy burden on Valborg and she began to wonder more often what had happened to the child. How it had turned out. What had become of it. Where her child was. She even expected it to try to track her down. She’d read stories about children who found out they’d been adopted and put in a lot of effort in adulthood to find and become acquainted with their biological parents. That was impossible now, in her case.

‘Did she mention who it was that took in the child?’ asked Konrád. ‘How it happened? Who found the foster parents? Was this recorded somewhere?’

‘As I said, I think that at first, she wanted to have an abortion, but then she met that midwife, who talked her out of it. The woman convinced Valborg to have the baby, and said she would make sure it was adopted and no one would need to know anything. Valborg accepted that. When she started searching for the child decades later, she found out that the woman was dead. Valborg never told us her name. Valborg’s own name was nowhere to be found in the hospital records when she looked. It was as if the birth had never taken place. That midwife seems to have been very motivating during it all. Valborg spoke highly of her and said that she hadn’t been forced to do anything against her will. It was more as if the woman had wanted to help her with what Valborg herself had decided that she needed and had to do.’

‘When did she have the baby?’

‘In September 1972.’

‘She started her search late.’

‘I think she feared finding something that... you know, would only add to her sadness.’

‘Did she give any reasons as to why she didn’t want to have the baby?’ Konrád asked.

‘No, not really,’ the woman said as she adjusted her mother’s pillow and stroked her greyish-white hair.

‘Not really?’

‘No, I don’t know what to say. I know she found it very difficult when I asked her about it. I got the feeling that everything about it had been a real tribulation for her. Even that it had been a kind of last resort.’

‘Do you mean that she was coerced?’

‘She said nothing about it.’

‘That the child’s father had been involved?’

‘All I know is that she could barely even talk about it.’

For a moment, Konrád stood thoughtfully at the window, then continued to try to fish more out of the woman. But she knew little about her aunt from the time in question and had no idea who Valborg associated with in her younger years. She did, however, have a vague memory of her mother saying that at one point Valborg had been a waitress in restaurants and was working at the nightclub Glaumbær when it burned down.

‘And the child’s father?’ Konrád asked.

‘She never mentioned him by name.’

‘He was never involved in the decision-making?’

‘Involved?’ The woman snorted. ‘It was more like he never existed.’