Chapter 4
TOMASARHAGI, REYKJAVIK,
FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 0600 GMT
Kristin woke up in the early hours with a sinking feeling about the day ahead. She knew the matter with the businessman was not over and that she was bound to encounter him again, maybe even later that day. Another source of worry was the knowledge that her brother was out on Vatnajokull in the middle of winter; he was experienced but you never knew how extreme the weather might become. After a bad night’s sleep, she got up shortly before six, took a quick shower and put on the coffee. Sometimes she missed having someone there to share her worries with.
Not that she minded living alone. She had lived for three years with a man she met after coming home from university in the States, a lawyer like her. But once the honeymoon period was over he had become increasingly domineering and she was relieved not to have to put up with his overbearing behaviour any longer. He had been so different when they first met, so witty and entertaining. He used to make her laugh and spoiled her with gifts and surprises. But all that had gradually dried up once they had moved in together; he had landed his fish, and at times she felt as if he was tearing out the hook.
Although she had always been independent, she was by nature quiet, somewhat introverted, protective of her privacy, and did not mind the absence of a man about the house. The sex had been nothing to write home about either, so she did not miss that. If she felt the urge, she could satisfy herself and she enjoyed the freedom that gave her. Enjoyed having the flat on Tomasarhagi to herself; only one toothbrush in the bathroom; no need to tell anyone where she was going. She could go out whenever she liked and come home when it suited her. She loved being alone, not having to pander to anyone else’s whims.
She had been so relieved when it was over that she was not sure she ever wanted to share her home again. Perhaps it was too great a sacrifice. Children had not crossed her mind. Maybe she was afraid of turning out like her parents. It had come as a surprise when, after they had lived together for a while, the lawyer had brought up the subject of children, saying they should think about starting a family. She had stared at him blankly and admitted that she had not given the matter much thought.
‘Then maybe you could stop fussing over Elias all the time,’ he said. ‘He is not your child, after all.’
What an extraordinary statement.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you treat him like a baby.’
‘Like a
‘You ring him ten times a day. He’s forever round here. You’ve always got some reason to go to town together. He hangs out here in the evenings. Sleeps on the sofa.’
‘He’s my brother.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re not jealous of Elias, are you?’
‘Jealous!’ he snorted. ‘Of course not. But it’s not natural, such an incredibly close relationship.’
‘Not natural? There are only the two of us. We’re close. What’s unnatural about that?’
‘Well, not unnatural exactly… it’s just he’s your brother not your child. I know he’s much younger than you but he’s almost twenty, he’s not a kid.’
She was silent for such a long time that he seized the chance to get up and claim he had some work to finish at the office.
Shortly afterwards, their relationship started to go downhill and by the end she had almost developed an aversion to him. Perhaps he had touched a nerve, opened her eyes to something she did not want to confront. She had met other men since but those had been nothing but brief flings and she had no regrets about any of them, with perhaps one exception. She regretted the way she had ended that relationship, the way they had parted. It was her fault and she knew it. Her sheer bloody ineptitude.
Just occasionally, when she was alone at home with time on her hands, she would have a vision of her future stretching out before her, saw herself growing older in lonely monotony, shrivelling up and dying; no children, no family, no nothing. Growing old in the oppressive silence of long summer evenings when she had nothing to do but read documents from the office. These moments tended to occur when she was disturbed by the shouts of children outside in the street or when she lay down in the evenings, feeling the weariness spreading through her body. Sometimes she thought the process was already happening, felt as if she were trapped inside time: all those long days, all those long, suffocating days, passed in solitary silence. At times she appreciated them, at others she wished her life were more eventful, presented more challenges, required more of her than merely sitting behind a desk all day and returning to an empty flat in the evenings.
Elias was her family. Their mother was dead, they had little contact with their father and few relatives to speak of. They had coped alone, she and Elias; taken care of one another. Perhaps the lawyer was right about him taking up too much of her time, but she had never minded.
She sat lost in a reverie over her coffee, leafing absently through the morning paper until it was time to leave for work. There was not much in the news. The national bank was in the process of being privatised and the minister for trade and industry was quoted as dismissing the need for legislation to diversify share ownership. The site of a Viking Age farm had been uncovered in the west of the country, and the Russian president Boris Yeltsin was due to celebrate his sixty-eighth birthday. It was quarter to nine when she left home. Sunrise was still nearly two hours off and the snow was falling thickly. She toiled slowly through the drifts. The traffic was heavy; people were in a hurry to get to work once they had dropped off their youngest children at the day nursery and seen the older ones off to school. The snow muffled the noise of the cars but a thick haze of exhaust fumes hung over the city. Kristin did not have a car; she preferred to walk, especially when the snow was deep like this. Distances were short in Reykjavik compared to California where she used to live; there you could talk about distance. Reykjavik had a population of only just over a hundred thousand but there were times when the locals behaved as if they lived in a giant metropolis, refusing to go anywhere without a car, even if it took only five minutes on foot.
On arriving at the office she was informed that the chairman of the Trade Council was waiting to see her, together with the foreign minister’s aide. What now? she wondered, bracing herself for the worst. Once the men had taken a seat in her office, they explained to Kristin that the man with the portable freezing plants, Runolfur Zophaniasson, had made threats against the chairman of the Trade Council, which were considered serious enough for the police to be notified. He had called the chairman late last night, apparently sober but raging about the advice he had received in connection with his dealings with Russia. During the call, he had threatened the chairman with physical violence and there was reason to believe he was in earnest.
‘But what does this have to do with me?’ Kristin asked, after they had filled her in.
‘He mentioned you specifically by name,’ explained the foreign minister’s aide, a young party member with political ambitions. ‘I gather he wasn’t exactly in good humour when he stormed out of here yesterday.’
‘He did nothing but hurl abuse as usual so I chucked him out. He threw a chair at the wall. I ignored his threats, and that made him even madder. What kind of headcase is he anyway? He thinks there’s some kind of conspiracy going on. Here at the ministry.’
‘I had the police run a check on him,’ said the chairman, a plump man, with a small, kindly face. ‘Runolfur has done a lot of wheeling and dealing in his time but nothing illegal, as far as they can tell. They went and had a word with him and he promised to behave, claimed he’d just lost his temper for a moment, but they warned us to be careful anyway. They don’t put much faith in his word. I won’t repeat the language he used about you in my hearing. Apparently he’s furious about losing a large amount of money in Russia and he blames us for it.’
‘I don’t really know the ins and outs of the case,’ Kristin said, ‘though I can assure you that we never gave him any incorrect information.’
‘Of course not,’ the aide said. ‘He alleges that we encouraged him to facilitate his business by sending over goods without any securities but that’s utter nonsense. It’s not our job to give out that sort of advice. How people
