Heaven and Hell (13 page)

The son: She had a really bad cough.

The father: She was sleeping badly.

The son: Or not well enough.

The father: No. And she had a fever.

The son: But it wasn’t much.

The father: No, no, it’s nothing.

The son: She’ll be up and about tomorrow.

The father: Yes, it’s nothing.

The son: No, nothing at all, not like that.

The father: No, nothing at all.

They stand close together, palms down on the counter, four trim, delicate hands side by side, and look at Brynjólfur with unexpected enthusiasm, as if they were trying to convince him and that it mattered that he agree with them. Thus they smile appreciatively when he mutters, no, of course it’s nothing. On the other hand he feels like the worst traitor and says in his embarrassment, I’m going to start getting
The Hope
ready today. Yes, exactly, I just stopped by to let you know, can you please tell Snorri I don’t have time to chat with him now, the ship is calling, boys, and a captain must heed its call! He turns abruptly so as not to see the joy and gratitude that light up their faces, steps toward the door, the father comes running after him, wants to say something, but Brynjólfur doesn’t give him the chance, opens the door and is already outside and putting distance between himself and the house, the father shouts his farewells and thanks after him; sharp little daggers that hit him in the back. Brynjólfur looks away before a house comes between them, father and son are standing in the doorway and start waving enthusiastically when they see his face, Brynjólfur’s right arm jerks but does not go up, then the house blocks his view and instead of continuing in the same direction and heading down to Lowest Spit where
The Hope
lies up on the crest of the beach, he turns down the next lane and goes almost in the opposite direction.

XII

Geirþrúður is outside when the boy and Helga return bu
rdened from the town, although it is mainly he who bears the load, uncertainty hanging over him like a shrieking tern, striking his head, he is covered in blood. Two ravens hop around ponderously a short distance from the woman, who scatters some food on the snow in front of the house, two others sit on the roof and wait, black shreds of the night. Helga stops in the middle of the street, likely so she won’t frighten these black birds, the boy has never seen a raven come so close to a person, Geirþrúður could reach out and touch the one closest to her. She has swept the snow aside, created a large, empty spot and sprinkled something on it, it looks very much to the boy like pieces of meat, he glances at Helga, who appears completely unsurprised. The raven comes from Hell, one source says, flew black as coal out of the jaws of the Devil, who lent it his voice and his cunning. We sometimes call Geirþrúður Ravens’ Mother. She started feeding the ravens shortly after her arrival here, it wasn’t very popular but Guðjón let it pass, like everything else she got up to, the raven is a remarkable bird, he said when his friend Reverend Þorvaldur complained that Geirþrúður was attracting the ravens to the houses, and that it wasn’t particularly cheering to wake up to their black croaking, you must appreciate that, Guðjón! Then Guðjón had looked out into the air and said thoughtfully, I read somewhere that in days of yore the raven made different, softer sounds, but that God has, for some reason, taken them from it and instead grafted to it a sound that was supposed to remind us of our sins, no doubt some damned nonsense, but nonsense can be entertaining, or what do you think, my friend? Þorvaldur said little, he was drinking at the time and had recently behaved very badly, wound up in Sodom and passed out there dead drunk, and thus had rather little interest in discussing sins and conscience and stopped talking about ravens, said nothing about how they often sat two by two on the roof ridge of the church when he pushed himself over there in the early morning, and had been doing so ever since Geirþrúður started feeding them. Ravens’ Mother. It fit. Her hair was black like a raven’s wing, her eyes dark pieces of coal that had lain for a thousand years deep down in the ground and had never been touched by light. The biggest gossips say she has a raven’s croak for a heart, but you shouldn’t believe everything people say. The ravens grab the pieces of meat, three of them fly up onto the roof to work on them, a fourth sits on the roof of Þorvaldur’s house, croaks twice, perhaps startling someone inside.

Geirþrúður waits by the gate. She looks at the boy and he goes slightly weak at the knees, they come so close to her that he sees her dull freckles and immediately feels a debt of gratitude toward them, without them her face with its pitch-black eyes and high cheekbones would become cold and repellent. She extends her hand, he puts down the merchandise and her cold palm latches momentarily around his, hello, she says, and her voice is a tiny bit hoarse and dusky, he has just glanced briefly up at the ravens.

Then they are in the parlor.

Geirþrúður sits on a heavy green chair, he on a couch with large pillows and an incredibly soft cover that he strokes instinctively as he would a dog. He looks with great interest at an unusually large bureau with innumerable small drawers. Geirþrúður follows his eyes, do you like the bureau? It’s big, he says, and has a lot of drawers. Yes, she says, it’s necessary to get oneself a little coffer to which few have access, preferably none but oneself. The hoarseness in her voice isn’t as noticeable indoors, her voice is softer and almost indolent, her black eyes rest on the boy, Ravens’ Mother, these words shoot into his mind without him being able to do anything about it, he doesn’t have much control over what shoots into his mind. Man is a peculiar creature. Has harnessed the powers of nature, conquered difficulties that seem unconquerable, he is lord of the Earth but has so little control over his thoughts and the depths beneath them, what dwells in this deep, how does it come into being, and whence does it come, does it bow down to any laws, or does man travel through life with dangerous disorder within him? The boy tries to push everything unnecessary from his mind, a raven’s croak for a heart, stories about Geirþrúður and foreign sea captains. She is wearing a white shirt and a long, black skirt, is it really called a skirt, he isn’t sure, the black hair that lies across her shoulders and the green chair is either ruffled or ragged, as if she hasn’t cared to comb it, she sits almost crosswise in the chair, arranges the pillows in the small of her back, dangles her feet over one of the arms, like a girl or an infant, yet is surely thirty-five years old. In contrast, the boy sits upright on this luxurious couch and feels ashamed of his stained woolen pants. It is so miserable to feel ashamed of such things when one’s friend has newly died, frozen to death right before one’s eyes, when life appears not to have any purpose, no meaning, and one even plans to let the sea take oneself tonight, I’ll likely be ridiculous until the very last moment, he thinks sadly. Geirþrúður strokes her lips with the ring finger of her right hand, very slowly, and then bites gently on the finger with white teeth, the incisor facing him is sharp, as in a predator. Helga comes in with coffee and cookies or cakes on a tray, it’s difficult for him, having lived all of his moments in an ordinary home in the countryside and at a fishing station, to make a distinction between fine cookies and cake. The tray is probably made of silver, the cups white with a printed leaf pattern,
oof
, he thinks, while at the same time it’s the only thing that comes to mind.

Oof.

Then his head is entirely empty.

Empty premises abandoned in haste.

He stares at nothing and the blood resounds in his ears like the escalating murmur of waves. Helga seems to be saying something. She is moving her lips, at least, and he asks, what? Geirþrúður looks at him, needs to turn her head nearly forty-five degrees in order to do so, her black hair falls like a wing across half her face, a trace of a smile is on her lips. I’m inside a novel! This thought strikes him and comes to his aid, saves him, somewhere he has read about all of this: a couch, chairs, such cups, these things called cookies or cakes and two women whom he doesn’t understand. This is a novel, he thinks happily, and can even smile, I’m in a novel. The murmur of blood falls silent in his ears, he’s inclined to lose his hearing, Helga is telling Geirþrúður, and his voice as well. I’m not sure I know how to drink from such fine cups, he then says apologetically, and adds, I’ve only come across them in novels, the latter statement intended as an explanation but of course it sounds completely absurd, they also look at each other, Helga takes a seat in a high-backed chair, she smiles, very faintly of course, but he is certain that this tiny change in her facial muscles is a smile and possibly in his favor.

You shouldn’t let fine cups bother you, says Geirþrúður in her soft, indolent voice, but with a trace of hoarseness lurking underneath, the raven’s croak on which she keeps a tight rein, the boy simply cannot control his thoughts, not one bit. It takes no special talent to drink from fine cups or eat with fine cutlery, although that might certainly be a widespread misunderstanding. Man is a creature, maybe a noble creature at his best, and he simply needs to eat, silver and porcelain don’t change that fact, but silver frequently changes a man and seldom for the better, do you want to smoke, she adds, and is quickly holding a silver-colored box, produces it by magic and pulls out a slender cigarette, the boy says, no thank you, but Helga accepts one, leans forward for Geirþrúður to light it, and the women both inhale smoke. Geirþrúður holds it inside for a long time, exhales slowly, then looks at the boy with her dark eyes, the smoke dissipates and vanishes, and she says, I’m very sorry how it went for Bárður, he was one of the few whom I really liked, you’ve lost a great deal. The boy takes such a large drink of hot coffee that he gets tears in his eyes, coughs twice, and the longing for Bárður nearly tears his chest apart, yet he says, like a complete idiot, this is very good coffee, and of course regrets having said it. Now it would be good if someone were to come in and shoot him in the head.

Geirþrúður waits until he has recovered himself after the cough, has managed without embarrassment to take another sip of coffee, then says, if you feel well enough to tell us, we would like to hear how it happened.

For some reason he isn’t surprised at the request, and he doesn’t withdraw into himself, on the contrary wants to tell about it, becomes perfectly enthusiastic, as if it mattered to sit there with these two women and tell them of the moment when he opened his eyes and saw Pétur’s black head poking up from the floor, until he set off from the fishing station, to meet the night—to tell the story that lay from life to death. But he has only just begun to tell of how the trapdoor to the attic was raised and Pétur’s head came up from the floor, like the Devil himself, and said, today we row, when someone knocks on the door, likely the one to the Café because the knocking is faint. The boy stops. The beer from Tryggvi, Helga says, stands up, runs her hands down her dress, looks quickly at the boy, wait with your story, and he nods his obedient head, listens to her footsteps grow distant. Tell me about yourself in the meantime, says Geirþrúður, almost without looking at him, he just barely catches a glimpse of her night-dark eyes as she turns her head to the side.

We never ask such things.

We only ask about things that are easy to answer and never let anyone near. One asks about fish, hay, and sheep, not about life.

Geirþrúður sits before him like a poorly raised child, with night in her eyes, and asks him about what is innermost, and he begins, as if nothing were more natural, doesn’t even say, well, there’s not much to tell, which would perhaps have saved everything, showing respect to higher powers by displaying modesty, no, he says right out, my father drowned when I was six years old, starting in that way at the core itself.

My father drowned when I was six years old and then Mother was alone with us three, all young, my sister just a baby, we were quickly broken apart and each thrown in a different direction. I think this isn’t a particularly good world we live in. I remember Father only hazily, and what I remember best I have from Mother, she wrote me a lot of letters and described him in them. Described him in such a lifelike way that it stuck in my memory and there hardly passes a day when I don’t think about him and sometimes I feel as if he’s watching over me, so I don’t feel too much loneliness. His eyes follow me from the bottom of the sea.

He stops, almost frightened, almost angry at himself for having so unhesitatingly torn out his own heart and displayed it to an unfamiliar woman, there it lies in his outstretched hand, like a blind, whimpering kitten. The clinking of bottles and a distant sound of voices give him time to regain his composure. Geirþrúður no longer looks at him, she had turned her head to the side at the same time that he started to tell the story, stroked the raven’s wing from her face, and now she looks over, the boy stares gloomily and full of self-contempt down at the floor, down into the soft cover which is reddish with an exotic flower pattern, everything is so alien now. Geirþrúður reaches for her half-smoked cigarette, he hears the quiet sound when she inhales, the embers glow stronger and burn up along the cigarette, life is glowing embers that heat the Earth and make it inhabitable. You can tell me the rest later, she says when the silence has started to grow heavier around the boy and to oppress him. It was almost as if there were a trace of warmth in her voice, probably a figment of his imagination, he thinks, yet feels slightly better, or enough to look up and around him, regard the divided parlor better, even ventures to lean to one side so he can see better. The window in the outer parlor is considerably wider and larger, a huge, strong table beneath it and an extremely large chandelier above, he can see a corner of the piano, or what he thinks is a piano, and if he leans the other way he can see a large painting, no smaller than two meters square and displaying the whirling street life in a huge city, as if everything were in motion, the boy becomes a bit dizzy and straightens up again. He realizes that he has looked peculiar, leaning to one side, gaping like a stupid cow, but Geirþrúður acts as if nothing is out of the ordinary, she smokes her cigarette thoughtfully, he catches a movement out of the corner of his eye, someone is standing in the doorway. He looks around and sees Bárður’s dead eyes in his white face and hears the precious voice of his friend in his head:

And there I was, thinking you were going to come to me.