The Quiet Mother

34

The door quivered from the impact and Konrád stood there wondering if he could have approached Ísleifur in a friendlier manner. The man’s reaction was understandable. He was undoubtedly justified in telling Konrád to go to hell. A complete stranger had appeared on his doorstep and started slandering him and making accusations about old sexual offences, and as if that wasn’t enough, the stranger had suggested that he might have a child. Ísleifur had every reason to be angry. He had no criminal record. The rape at Glaumbær was an invention of Konrád’s. He knew there was little to go on, but the ex-policeman felt that there was more to Valborg’s story: that she’d suffered a major shock in life that was somehow connected with the child, and rape wasn’t out of the picture. Maybe he was going too far. Ísleifur had once been charged with rape, but nothing could be proven against him and he was never convicted.

Konrád grimaced. At one time, he would have handled this differently and better. His age was probably rearing its head. He no longer had the patience for tact and courtesy when it was needed most. Maybe that had always been a fault of his. He tried to convince himself that he hadn’t said those things out of utter thoughtlessness, but had wanted to challenge the man and upset him and read his response. It did little good. He was worried about having overstepped the mark when he suggested that Ísleifur had raped Valborg and got her pregnant in the process.

Fuck it, Konrád thought to himself as he walked back to the car. There was no need for him to act like a policeman any more. He was retired. His mobile phone was lying on the dashboard, and he saw that Svanhildur had tried to reach him twice. He called her and found out that she hadn’t been idle since the last time they talked.

Svanhildur had spent the better part of the day enquiring about midwives and abortions. She had connections in various hospital wards, but dug up nothing until she called a woman with whom she was vaguely familiar and who had studied midwifery before changing course and studying medicine. Svanhildur recalled that when she was at the Midwifery College, there’d been a young woman there who was known for her religious fervour. She belonged to a religious sect and had very strong views on abortion. She preached against it at every opportunity, had argued about that controversial issue with her fellow students, lost her temper several times, made threats and caused quite an uproar in general. The woman was reprimanded twice for inappropriate behaviour. What tipped the scales for the college authorities was a scene between her and a young woman who sought advice on the termination of her pregnancy. A midwife witnessed the incident, got into an argument with the student and ended up in a physical altercation with her. Afterwards, the student felt she no longer fitted in at the college and left it voluntarily. In another version of the story, she was asked to leave.

After telling Konrád everything she knew, which wasn’t very much, Svanhildur gave him the phone number and address of a friend she thought was more familiar with the incident, having been a student at the college when it occurred. Konrád thanked Svanhildur for the favour. He decided not to put off paying the woman a visit. She lived on Goðheimar Street, a short distance from Ísleifur’s home, where he was.

He didn’t call ahead and the woman was quite surprised at this unusual visit. Konrád said that he was a friend of Svanhildur’s, who had spoken to her earlier that day, and asked if he could talk to her about a certain woman who had studied midwifery but hadn’t been able to complete her studies after running into trouble at the college.

‘Are you that policeman?’ said the woman, before inviting him in. ‘Svanhildur called me earlier and said you might be in touch. Do you know anything about it?’

‘I was hoping you did,’ said Konrád.

‘Why are you and Svanhildur wondering about this now? Sunnefa died many years ago.’

‘Oh, is she dead? Her name was Sunnefa?’

‘What do you want with her? Svanhildur said it was a police matter. That you’re a police officer.’

‘No, I was. I’m retired now. This is just something I’m looking into on my own. It’s in connection with a woman I knew, but who died recently.’

‘Svanhildur said it had something to do with the woman who was found murdered.’

‘Yes, that’s right. I wondered if she knew this Sunnefa. Whether they were in contact with each other in the old days. What can you tell me about her? I understand she got on the wrong side of the college administrators?’

‘Her views got her kicked out. She was very uncompromising. People had started to think differently about these issues, and expressed far more liberal views, you see, and she was completely against it. Hated it all and wasn’t shy about asserting her own views. She was insufferable in that respect. Couldn’t leave it alone. Typical of those zealots. She preached to us as if she was the only one in the world who knew the truth.’

‘More liberal views?’

‘About abortion,’ said the woman, as if she felt that Konrád should have his head more in the game. ‘Free love and all that. Hippie attitudes. The point of view that women control their own bodies and have every right to do what they want with them. Those sorts of views.’

‘But she had other ideas?’

‘She did indeed. Never grew tired of making her opinions known.’

‘So she left the college?’

‘I’d actually gone into medicine by then, but I was told she’d lost it and bawled out a woman seeking an abortion, which is of course simply outrageous if it’s true. She was a very promising student, actually. She really knew her stuff, but there was no way she could finish.’

‘Do you think she never worked as a midwife, then?’ Konrád asked.

‘I can’t imagine she did, but it’s hard to say.’

‘What were women supposed to do if...?’

‘They were just supposed to have their baby,’ said the woman. ‘God’s will and all that. Whatever she could quote from the Bible. She knew it inside out.’

‘But adoption? Wasn’t that a possibility?’

‘Yes, that was one way, and Sunnefa was a great advocate of it. Said that it was always possible to find a good home for the children.’

‘Do you know if she helped any women in that way?’

‘No. Did she?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Konrád. ‘If she didn’t work as a midwife — or not at the Women’s Health Unit anyway — can you imagine how she could have got information about women who requested an abortion or considered that possibility?’

‘No, what—’

‘Or how she could have got in touch with those women?’

‘Why would she have wanted such information?’ the woman asked in surprise.

‘So she could turn women off that path. Something like that. I don’t know.’

‘Maybe she worked in a doctor’s surgery. I have no idea. That poor woman who was found murdered — did she know Sunnefa?’

‘I’d like to find out,’ Konrád said.

‘Was it related to something that happened in the past? Something to do with abortion?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Konrád.

‘Maybe she was attacked because of that?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘It’s as if no one is safe any more,’ said the woman wearily.

Konrád sensed that she’d had enough of his visit, but he still had a few questions for her, and pressed on, asking about the people whom Sunnefa socialised with during those years. The woman remembered few details. She suggested he speak with a friend of hers who’d started at the National Hospital around the same time as them, studying to become a medical laboratory technician, as they were then called. She thought that he and Sunnefa had seen each other once or twice.

‘Which sect did Sunnefa belong to?’ Konrád asked, entering the friend’s name in his phone as he got up to go. The woman seemed relieved that this peculiar interrogation was at an end. ‘Do you remember that?’

‘Sect?’ the woman asked.

‘Didn’t you say she belonged to a religious sect?’

‘Oh, that. I have no idea. All I remember is that she was full of religious fervour and once said when she was railing against abortions that all God’s children were welcome to join it.’

‘The sect?’

‘Yes. And she quoted the Bible, of course.’

‘What passage?’

‘Oh, what do you think?’

Konrád didn’t have to think long.

‘Let the children come to me...?’

‘That’s right.’

When Konrád returned to his home in Árbær, he sat down at his computer and looked up something that had been on his mind ever since he met Valborg at the museum. She had mentioned a crag on a mountain to the west that sometimes came to mind when she sat in front of the sculptures in the museum — Tregasteinn, the Rock of Sorrow — and now he found its story. The crag was on Hólsfjall Mountain out west in the Dalir District, and the story went that once a woman had been outside with a baby when an eagle came and snatched the child and flew with it towards the mountain. The woman followed the bird to the crag and when she got there she saw a stream of blood running down the rock, and her heart burst from exhaustion and grief.