The Quiet Mother

3

They met at the Ásmundur Sveinsson Museum.

Konrád remembered how reluctant he was to help her when she called. He said he was retired and not taking on any new projects, but she didn’t give up and called again about a week later and asked if he might have changed his mind. Konrád was surprised at her stubbornness, but didn’t want to be impolite. He sensed the pain in her voice and suspected that it hadn’t been easy for the woman to contact him.

‘Weren’t you in charge of the case up there on Langjökull Glacier?’ she asked, disheartened, after he’d twice tried to end the conversation. He couldn’t deny that he was. It was one of the more difficult of his cases and had been given a lot of media coverage, as almost three decades went into solving it. Konrád had sometimes been pestered by people who had all sorts of ideas for him, garish conspiracy theories about disappearances, deaths, fraud and deceit traceable to the Icelandic criminal flora.

Shortly afterwards, they said goodbye and Konrád thought the matter was over and done with, but two months later the woman called again.

‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ she began, ‘but I’ve called you before to ask for your help.’

He vaguely recalled their conversation, remembered the pain in her voice, and dreaded having to refuse the woman his help for the third time. He hadn’t given her request any thought, mainly because she’d never had the chance to go into detail, just asked if he might be willing to help her with a little matter that had been bothering her for a long time and was personal. He hadn’t wanted to ask anything more about it because he feared it would be the start of further business between them. Now he had to admit that his curiosity was piqued.

‘What is it that you’re so concerned about? What would you like me to do for you?’ he finally asked, when their conversation became awkward.

‘I prefer not to talk about it on the phone,’ she said, finding his attitude to have changed slightly in her favour. ‘I would appreciate it if you could be so kind as to meet me. Maybe at a cafe in town. Or wherever you like. And please excuse these interruptions; I know I’m bothering you, but I just don’t know where else to turn.’

She mentioned that before she stopped working, her job was a short distance from the Ásmundur Sveinsson Museum and she occasionally went to that quiet place to unwind at the end of the day. They agreed to meet there one afternoon. When Konrád arrived, no one was at the museum but a few tourists. A busload of the same was driving away and, of course, more were expected. Reykjavík was drowning in tourists, and tourism companies desperately sought destinations to drive them to and from. The Ásmundur Sveinsson Museum was one of the more interesting ones, located where the city used to end and surrounded by a sculpture garden.

The building itself was strangely timeless and alien; there was none other like it in town. There, severe surfaces and soft lines collided, and over them rose a domed roof that resembled an astronomical observatory. It was as if a ship from a distant galaxy had been stranded there.

Valborg sat on a bench next to one of the sculptures in the gently curving exhibition hall. The statue was of a mother holding a child on her knee and gazing at it affectionately; its name was Motherly Love. When Konrád came in, he gestured hesitantly to Valborg; they greeted each other and she invited him to sit down beside her.

‘To think that it’s possible to change an ordinary rock into such beautiful art,’ she said, admiring the sculpture.

Konrád had once seen part of an interview with the artist on his old black-and-white TV and noticed the sculptor’s strong fingers, his broken nails with dirt beneath them, and scars of cuts made by his chisel and hammer. Rugged hands that ground down rock and changed it into stories and poems.

‘He crafted such beautiful images of women,’ said Valborg. ‘Mothers especially. Strong women who hold their children and admire them and shelter and feed them. The love between a mother and her child, carved in stone.’

‘Is it something you think about a lot?’ Konrád asked, looking at Valborg after a few moments of silence. Her countenance was kind, her forehead high and intelligent, and her eyebrows dark and arched.

‘More so as the years go by,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even want to hold it. I never saw it.’

‘What did you never see?’

The woman didn’t take her eyes off the artwork.

‘I’ve gone from one specialist to another and they tell me that the time I have left is growing shorter. They have medicine to slow down the disease and reduce the pain, but it can’t be turned back and I have to accept that. I’ve tried. It isn’t easy. I’ve been putting my affairs in order lately and... I don’t really know how to say it. I had a child and it was taken away from me immediately after birth, or rather... it wasn’t taken from me, I gave it up. I’d actually agreed to do so before the baby was born, and I thought it wisest not to see it or hold it, in order to avoid any chance of making a connection. I’ve never stopped thinking about it even though I’ve never made any serious attempt until now to find out what became of the blessed child. It’s been forty-seven years and... I don’t know. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. I accepted it all because it was my decision and I couldn’t keep the baby, I knew that, but now I want to know if it’s been all right and maybe tell it... tell it what happened and why things happened as they did and find out how it has coped with life, to stop me from worrying. That it was the right decision. That I did the right thing, despite everything.’

‘Forty-seven years is a long time.’

‘I always say “the child”,’ Valborg said softly. Konrád sensed how tired and worn out she was and thought of the painkillers she’d mentioned. ‘It’s nearly fifty years old, but I still say “the child”,’ she said. ‘Naturally, I never knew it otherwise. The things I say! I didn’t get to know it at all.’

‘What have you done to find out about it?’ Konrád asked.

‘I lived in Hveragerði, actually moved there because of this, and gave birth at home. It went really well and the midwife was there and she was good to me and understood my situation. She actually encouraged me to go that route rather than have an abortion. I last saw the child in her hands. I’ve found out that she passed away and I can’t find any information about the child, which isn’t strange really, considering how we dealt with it. Of course, I know the date and year of birth, but they haven’t been of any use and I wonder whether the date of birth was changed. I tried asking the police, but no crime was committed. It was all done with my consent. The police are drowning in work and advised me to make it public; go to the newspapers, the television stations. I can’t. I would never do that.’

‘Why did you give up the child?’

Konrád put the question so bluntly that he immediately regretted it.

‘Do you think you can help me?’ Valborg asked, without answering him.

‘I don’t see how,’ Konrád replied, reluctant to become involved. ‘From what you’ve told me, it seems you’ve explored all your main options. And I don’t know, maybe it would be best for you to let it go. If no documents are found and people who could help you are deceased, it might be best to let this rest in peace. Besides, you never know what you might discover after all this time. Maybe you would be happy and satisfied and everything would have worked out for the best. But you might possibly end up feeling much worse than you do now.’

‘I know that, and I’m willing to take the risk,’ Valborg said, looking at him as if she’d already thought these things through. ‘I’m willing to do anything it takes to find out what happened to my child. I can pay you. I’ve put money aside for this.’

‘This isn’t about money,’ Konrád said.

‘You solved the case in the end, that one on Langjökull. Even if it took thirty years. You didn’t give up.’

‘I actually gave up on it many times,’ Konrád said. ‘Made mistakes. I’m far from proud of that case.’

‘But the papers said that—’

‘Well, not everything the papers say is true. Why did you give up the child? Was it your own decision?’

Valborg gave the sculpture of the mother and child a long look.

‘You won’t help me?’ she said without any pushiness, although her disappointment was obvious.

‘I’m just struggling to see what I can do for you. Unfortunately. I don’t deal with these sorts of things.’

‘And you think I should let it be?’

‘Of course it’s not for me to say.’

‘No, probably not.’

They sat there silently, admiring the artwork, as the day’s fading light fell on them through the slanted windows.

‘Have you heard the story of the crag Tregasteinn — the Rock of Sorrow?’ Valborg asked.

‘No,’ Konrád said.

‘It’s on a mountain out west,’ said Valborg. ‘I sometimes think of it when I look at this beautiful sculpture.’

She stopped when she noticed Konrád glance at his watch.

‘I’m not going to take up any more of your time,’ she said, standing up.

‘I don’t want you to leave here upset,’ said Konrád.

‘I’m not at all upset,’ said Valborg. ‘Thank you for meeting me.’

‘Won’t you tell me why you gave up your child?’

‘I see no point in it if you’re not going to help me.’

‘I don’t even know where I would start.’

‘No, I understand, don’t worry. I wanted to test this path fully, but see that it’s closed. Thank you again for meeting me. And I’m sorry for the trouble. You won’t hear from me again.’

Looking back in his mind’s eye, Konrád saw the woman as she left the museum, short-statured and helpless and tormented by a painful past. She kept her word and Konrád heard no more from her. After Marta called with the unbelievable news that she’d been murdered in her home, he wondered whether he’d failed her somehow. He sat there dumbfounded, incredulous that anyone could have attacked that gentle woman as violently as Marta described. Nothing in his conversations with Valborg suggested that she could have been in any danger. Konrád was reluctant to accept tasks like the one she’d proposed to him. Reluctant to involve himself in other people’s private affairs, as if he were still on the police force, with everything that entailed. It could be a real strain, delving into people’s tragedies. He preferred to be free of such things.

Eventually, he turned back to the papers he’d been reading when Marta interrupted him, and now he saw more clearly than before a part of himself in Valborg’s ordeal. He himself was looking for answers. In his hands, he held a printout of the testimony of a young woman in a decades-old criminal case that few remembered and was still unsolved. The woman was walking along Skúlagata Street one evening in 1963 when she came across the body of a man lying in his own blood in front of the facilities of the Butchers’ Association of the South. The man was Konrád’s father. He’d been stabbed twice and died there on the pavement. The wounds were deep and in the right places for causing as much damage as possible, and the woman who found him spoke repeatedly about all the blood that ran into the gutter.

The woman was still alive. Konrád had never met or spoken to her. Lately, he’d thought a lot about whether he should meet her or let it be, and was contemplating this again when Marta called. He hadn’t paid the matter any attention in all his years working for the Criminal Investigation Department, but it had never strayed far from his mind, and recently he’d been trying to muster up the courage to contact the woman and ask if he could bother her.

He still hadn’t gone for it. Konrád knew that if he did, it would be the biggest step he’d ever taken in the search for his father’s murderer.

And he feared there would be no turning back.