The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

56 Break-in 2002

Several days later another unexpected guest appeared out of the Advent darkness. It was early in the day, and Nancy opened the garage door. A long coat on high heels stepped in onto the concrete floor and clicked, performed half a swirl, and swung a scarf, looking around. Her blond, waxed hair was shoulder-long, and her lips glistened with what I think they call gloss, that slimy stuff that dry women lubricate their words with.

In a moment of confusion I was afraid she might be an inspector from the city council, or the Health or Social Services Department, who had come to peer up my colon or close down this illegal old folks’ container, but instead I got a loud chirpy ‘Well, hi there!’ And when she reached the bed, I realised that this was Rainmaker, a woman who had cultivated children from the manure of my own blood.

‘Hi,’ I answered.

‘Nice to see you. And sorry for being so lazy about visiting you.’

‘Yes. Laziness is a vice.’

‘Huh?’

‘Laziness is a vice.’

‘Huh? Yeah? Ha-ha-ha. Always so busy, with the kids and, you know, all that stuff. But how’s life, Herra, dear?’

‘Life is just as I want it.’

‘Oh yeah? Ha-ha. The kids send all their love. They’re always asking about Grandma Herra.’

‘Oh, they must have forgotten me by now, those creatures.’

Damn it if my heart wasn’t beating faster. I hadn’t realised that old thing was still capable of changing gear.

‘No, no, not at all. We always talk about you as one of the family. You can be sure of that!’ For a moment she paused stiffly, and a hint of misery darkened the jolly facade of her face, before she cheerfully recovered and said, ‘I brought you some magazines!’ And then she pulled out some glossy rags about life behind the finest walls of the city, with all the shattered hearts that were to be found there. She placed the reading material on my covers, beside the computer that I closed like an eyelid. Rainmaker gave it a probing glance but then suddenly turned her head when Nancy said goodbye, inspecting her thoroughly as she brushed a lock of hair off her eyes. Her disdain was palpable: there’s nothing that irks a wanton woman more than the sight of a pure, timid maiden who is already faithful to the man she has yet to meet.

‘Yes, magazines, you say.’

‘Yeah, I thought it might be fun for you to… just gossip mags, really.’

‘But not about you?’

‘Huh?’

‘Not gossip about you and Magnús?’

This clearly threw her. A heat wave flushed across her face and she fluttered her eyelids. ‘Ha-ha! No. We’re not that famous.’

‘I always say that everyone is famous in Iceland except for the president. Nobody knows him.’

‘Ha-ha. It’s always so much fun when you come out with these sayings.’

And now I sensed that she’d actually missed my warped mind a tiny bit. Missed her good old mother-in-law’s banter, mouldy as it had become. I remember how well I’d welcomed her at first, when Magnús had first shown up with her for lunch on Skothúsvegur, a shapely graduate in business administration. She’d had great fun with this strange lady who cooked sausage with sauerkraut, smoked cream-yellow Roth-Händle cigarettes, and talked about our days at the presidential residence the way some people talked about children they had and missed. And I was rather happy with her. My Prince Potato had finally nailed a wife. There was joy in the house back then.

There wasn’t the slightest trace of remorse or grievance in this Icelandic ‘girl.’ She had locked away that freshly skinned dog that was her divorce in the dungeons of her palace, and the echo of his piercing howls didn’t travel as far as this frugal garage.

‘So you’ve split up?’ I said without accusation.

‘Huh? Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Unfortunately. But that’s just life. And I want you to know we parted on good terms and remain the best of friends.’

‘No one parts on good terms.’

‘Yes! Magnús and I did! Ha-ha.’

‘That’ll be the first time in the history of the world, then.’

‘Yeah, ha-ha, perhaps.’

‘What’s happening with the money, Ragnheidur?’

‘The money?’

‘Magnús tells me you have it. My money.’

‘You mean the money from Skothúsvegur? Yes, right, that’s precisely what I wanted to talk to you about. I find it very hurtful that you think we intended to take this money that is in our keeping. We just decided to spread the risk and to divide it between us so that—’

‘I haven’t heard from you in more than a year.’

‘No, and I’m very sorry about that, Herra, dear, very sorry. But I think that’s something between you and Magnús. And Haraldur and Ólafur… I was always saying that we should pop in to see you, but—’

‘Where’s the money?’

‘The money? Now? It’s… it’s in a… we just decided to spread it… not put all the eggs into the same basket, you see. So it’s here and there, in so-called investment funds. But we can take it out, if you like. Of course, it’s… your money, in that sense.’

‘In any sense.’

‘Yeah, no, no, but naturally maybe the boys will… yeah, I mean, obviously you weren’t going to start spending, you know, sixty million, ha-ha, I mean being bed-bound and all that, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to…’

All I needed now was a good kitchen knife, because the rage made me sit up against my pillow so that this old hag could finish off the bloody tart.

‘Ragnheidur, dear. Up until now the unwritten law in most countries around the globe has been that you don’t start spending the inheritance from a parent until they’re dead. That means stopped breathing and six feet under. Locked in a coffin with the lid tightly screwed on.’

The words had caused me to tremble and strained my lungs.

‘Yeah, no. That’s… of course, that’s right.’

‘What did the money go into? The patio?’

‘The patio? No. What makes you say that?’

‘I… keep an eye on things, even though I’m—’

‘Yeah? You keep an eye?’

‘Yes… yes, yes.’

I’d painted myself into a corner. I tried to get back on track again.

‘And you think… you really think I believe you haven’t used any of that money?’

‘I mean, we might have used, you know, some of the interest…’

‘Interest?’

‘Yes, we just felt that, you know, since we were working on growing this money for you that… but the principal hasn’t changed.’

‘Well, well, that’s really something.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, Herra, and of course it’s a lot of work to take care of big amounts like that because, as they say, money is like flowers or something, you have to look after them, and we felt it was only natural to get something in return for all that work, and maybe that’s why we’ve been just…’

She shut up. She couldn’t continue. She couldn’t tell me she’d rooted through my deathbed, stretched under the yellow catheter, rummaging for everything under the mattress.

From where did this generation enter into Icelandic history? My foremothers had rowed across Breidafjördur, fishing for food to stuff up their noses. Nothing was achieved without hard work. Then Mum came along with all her scruples. Making no demands. Offering her heart to one man and then keeping it wrapped in a ribbon for seven years when he forgot to pick it up. Together they had nothing and still lost it all. Then they got back on track again and scraped enough together for the closing chapters; they were over fifty by the time they could finally buy a proper house.

Ragnheidur fiddled with her blond hair a moment, pumped her lips with air, glanced artificially at her watch, and then planted her gaze on the computer and said, ‘Could I use your computer for a sec? I’m actually on my way to a meeting later and I’m expecting… an e-mail.’

‘You’re expecting an e-mail?’

‘Yes.’

‘In my computer?’

‘Yes, I can check my mailbox if I go online. It’ll only take a minute.’

I didn’t like it one bit, but I couldn’t think of anything smart enough to protect my files. She was already standing and walking towards the end of my bed. Then she snatched the computer and yanked out the plug with her wine-red nails and took it over to the kitchen counter. What a sly little bitch she was.

‘Do you have a bad connection in here?’

‘Huh? No. No, no.’

‘It drops out… the connection.’ Then unnaturally natural: ‘I’ve got a connection in my car. I’ll take it out to the car for a minute.’

She closed the screen again, placed the computer under her arm, and smiled at me. ‘I’ll only be a sec! You can take a look at the magazines in the meantime!’ It took me so much by surprise that I could hardly get my brain to function, let alone my voice. She had simply vanished with my computer! A connection in her car? I’d never heard of such a thing. I’d always seen myself as a cunning she-devil, but now I’d met my equal. And so niftily executed!

She was away a hell of a long time.